Apr 14th, 2009
Posted by Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 5:16pm	Torture

Jane Mayer: The CIA and DOD Lied to the Red Cross

On Saturday, Alternet's Liliana Segura interviewed The New Yorker's Jane Mayer about the revelations of the ICRC report (PDF). Segura asked if the report contained any surprises for Mayer. It did:

One of the things that caught my eye last night was that it’s clear that the CIA — and I think you'd have to guess the Department of Defense — lied to the Red Cross. They told the Red Cross when it visited Guantánamo [in 2002] that it had seen all of the detainees. But what the report says is that some of the detainees — some of the high-value detainees — realized when they were finally sent to Guantánamo in 2006 that they’d been there before. They were there. And yet the Red Cross was not allowed to see them. The Red Cross was told they’d seen everybody.

So the CIA and DOD lied to the Red Cross. There were some hidden prisoners in Guantánamo. That's an overt act; lying to the Red Cross, hiding prisoners from them. So, that’s interesting to me.

These so-called “high-value” detainees, all former CIA prisoners, five of whom have been charged with crimes relating to 9/11, include Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abd Al-Rahim Hussain Mohammed Al-Nashiri. Attorneys from the ACLU's John Adams Project worked with under-resourced military lawyers to provide legal counsel for several of the Guantánamo detainees including al-Nashiri during the military commissions process.

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Tags: Close Guantanamo, national security project

1. MadDog Says:
   Apr 14th, 2009 at 7:24pm

   Thanks for this post Suzanne!

   Over at Emptywheel's place (http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/), EW (aka Marcy Wheeler) had a similar conclusion earlier last week in her post "Double-Dipping at Gitmo?" (http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/04/06/double-dipping-at-gitmo/ ).

   EW noted the following:

   We already knew that DOD moved prisoners (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/41394.html) to hide them from ICRC--so I suspect ICRC will soon have its fears confirmed.

   "We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques," Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who's since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture.

   [snip]

   A third person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world.

   "In the past when the ICRC has made a big deal about certain detainees, the DOD (Defense Department) has 'moved' them away from the attention of the ICRC," Fredman said, according to the minutes.

2. F Says:
   Apr 17th, 2009 at 9:18am

   RED CROSS NEEDS TO WORRY ABOUT OTHER THINGS THAN THIS So WHAT the CIA and DOD lied to the Red Cross. THE PRISONERS AT GITMO WOULD KILL YOU. SO SHUT UP AND HELP PEOPLE IN NEED JERKS GET A LIFE JANE MAYER AND OR A NEW JOB!

3. MAKAAINA Says:
   Apr 25th, 2009 at 1:00pm

   Dear F

   The Red Cross has done more good in more ways than are envisioned in your small philosophy of hate.

   Some of the prisoners might try to kill us, just as we kill in Iraq, for a non-existent reason.

   Jane Mayer and many others reporting on the shame of the US are doing a valuable job that needs to be done so we can clean up the Bush legacy and reclaim the morals we all believe in.

4. Rekko 98 Says:
   May 31st, 2009 at 3:04pm

   Apropos this, the following links discuss the SASC report and its methodology:

   http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/or_20090 110_9776.php

   http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/04/la wyers-letter-counters-torture-report/